Starting at 1st level, you learn the spare the dying, and chill touch cantrip, which counts as a warlock cantrips for you, you can cast either of these cantrips as a bonus action on you’re turn. When you cast a necromancy spell of 1st level or higher that deals necrotic damage you can add your Charisma modifier + the number of undead under your command to the damage.
Additionally, undead have difficulty harming you. If an undead targets you directly with an attack or a harmful spell, that creature must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC (an undead needn’t make the save when it includes you in an area effect, such as the explosion of fireball). On a failed save, the creature must choose a new target or forfeit targeting someone instead of you, potentially wasting the attack or spell. On a successful save, the creature is immune to this effect for 24 hours. An undead is also immune to this effect for 24 hours if you target it with an attack or a harmful spell.
Defy Death
Starting at 6th level, you can give yourself vitality when you cheat death or when you help someone else cheat it. You can regain hit points equal to 1d8 + your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1 hit point) when you succeed on a death-saving throw or when you stabilize a creature with spare the dying.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to Charisma modifier (a minimum of once), you regain all uses of this ability on a long rest.
Convergence of Death
Beginning at 10th level, your similarities to the undead have begun to blur, you gain resistance to necrotic and poison damage, and as an action, for 1 hour you can give a number of allies equal to your Charisma modifier, besides yourself;
Resistance to Necrotic and Poison Damage
Your allies gain yours 1st level undead feature of being masked by undead
Not needing to breath, or eat.
You also gain these features however they are permanent for you. You also don’t require sleep, you only need to rest for the allotted time of a long rest for your race, to complete a long rest.
Undying Incarnation
When you reach 14th level, The hordes of the undead under your command now at times sever even past their own expiration points. Any undead that is friendly to you or that is under your control you can choose to do one of the following:
You can choose to trade places with an undead under your command within 60 feet of you.
When one of your undead dies, you can choose as a reaction to having that undead make a melee attack roll against its assault. Or you can choose to have every creature within 5 feet of the undead make a Constitution saving throw that deals 3d8 necrotic damage, you regain half the damage dealt as temporary hitpoints (these do not stack). You can use this reaction a number of times equal to your Charsmia modifier (minimum or once), this recharges on a long rest.
You can have a number of undead equal to your Charisma modifier (a minimum of 1) server you without expending a spell slot to recast a spell that allows you to control an undead creature. These creatures must be equal to one-fourth of your level rounded down.
Let's be Honest here, the undying is one of the most underwhelming warlocks Wizards has released, and the undead only makes it worse for this sub-class. So as to not have it step on to many toes, this has become my solution to the undying warlock as it has changed up some of its play and made it make the necromancer, and the grave cleric rethink making fun of it for a bit more than half a second. to those who post I would like to know what you think needs a change after looking at this revision to the undying and what it might need to be better than it once was. and the goal here is not to make an undead warlock but one all its own, with a new version of the undying.
While it is very thematically appropriate to have animate dead on the list, with the 2 casts per short rests it could get out of hand quick. Probably no worse than when a necromancer works the system, later in the game but when you first get it, it could be overly potent.
I think someones done the math on how many undead this would mean, its a lot of them. I suspect that is why they never got it, hell animate dead is appropriate for the base warlock. But since a 10th level wizard could control 46 undead, it would take 2 short rests to duplicate that. I don't see a problem with it in the sense that all the problems with it also have to be handed for the any full caster with the spell who works it. With enough short rests it would be around a 100, and no one wants to deal with that. Heck no one wants to deal with 48 of them.
Among the Dead: Like this one, but I would make one small change to the language: "...which count as warlock cantrips for you but do not count against the number of cantrips you know,..." to ensure that RAW they arent being forced to give up cantrips when they get these.
Defy Death: I think it would make more sense to give the other creature the temporary hit points when you target them with spare the dying, rather than yourself.
Convergence of Death: This one is fine, but I think the language could use a little brushing up as some of it reads kind of awkwardly right now.
Undying Incarnation: I agree with the posts above that Animate Dead is too powerful on the warlock, and thus this feature loses alot of its potency. Perhaps rewriting it with Summon Undead in mind where you could get stronger benefits, but with the potential of only one creature under your command.
Edit: Almost forgot that there is a Warlock Invocation which allows you to cast Animate Dead (Undying Servitude). It would be a little unorthodox, but perhaps you could give them access to this Invocation as a subclass feature rather than as a spell.
At level 11, your Undying Warlock would be able to create 15 skeletons or zombies per short rest, or re-exert control over 24 (1, or 4 per casting, plus 4 additional for upcasting by two levels, per slot, which you have 3 at 11th)
Lets say you are a reborn, so 4 hour long rests, leaving you with 20 hours to play with. Lets also say you can't do back-to-back rests, so say at least 10 minutes between each rest (gives you plenty of time to cast, and issue orders, and such). Lets also assume you can find enough suitable bodies for any new undead you are animating.
You could do 12 short rests in 14 hours (12 x 1 hour for each short rest, plus 12 x 10 minutes for a gap in between each rest), leaving you with 6 hours of other things to do. In those 14 hours, you can animate 195 undead. (1 lot of castings after the long rest, plus 12 lots castings from the short rests = 13*15 undead)
Since you can can exert control on up to 24 undead per lot of castings, you only need 8 short rests to maintain this horde (195/24 = 8.125; thus 1 lot of the long rest, plus 8 more lots). This reduces the time spent resting to 13 hours, 10 minutes, leaving 10 hours and 50 minutes a day to do what you will with a nearly 200 strong horde of zombies/skeletons.
Remember to clearly identify each undead, so you know which one to recast on at what time.
While technically true I don't think in any game you can just back end short rests or separate them by 10 minutes. You'd be lucky if a DM lets you take 4 short rests a day and that is whether or not they had to worry about this trick. A 11th level wizard would be at 66 controlled with 1 short rest. And on top of that while its slow going both of them will have access to unlimited zombies in 2 more levels. This is one of those problems that only exist on paper, at least in any way more so than it already does for the wizard. Maybe they'd squeeze enough short rests out of the day for 96 but is that really that much worse than 66?
Personally though I'd get rid of it as even with 0 short rests that is likely more minions running around than what any group wants to deal with. They really went out of their way to make the action economy a train wreck this edition with all the base summon spells. The new ones like summon undead/fey etc are not too bad in that regard but I feel they may be a bit too powerful. I'd switch it to summon undead except for the issue where warlocks just already get it for free. Life transference would be a interesting choice opening up a from of healing for this warlock. Maybe in Defy death allow you to regain HP when spare the dying is cast to stabilize someone or when life transference is cast at someone with 0 HP. The thing is once you remove animate dead most the other subclass features fall apart here. So its really a start over from scratch type thing if you don't have that.
They really like throwing bigger spell lists at people recently, this, mark of x from eberon, tashas expanding the list(the last one i mostly agree with it feels like filling out things that should have been there). I don't own ravnica no real desire to, thats a power creep background, it effectively has 2 features instead of 1 on top of the normal skills, tool, language and the spell list is incredibly good when you are playing a spellcaster who normally does not have access to some of these.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone it is really appreciated I know that some of these sub-classes don't get a lot of attention with players especially with how bad these have ended up. here's a bit more of the revisions that everyone has given in more of a final form.
Starting at 1st level, you learn the spare the dying, and chill touch cantrip, which counts as a warlock cantrips for you but don’t count against the number of cantrips you know, you can cast either of these cantrips as a bonus action on you’re turn. When you cast a necromancy spell of 1st level or higher that deals necrotic damage you can add your Charisma modifier + the number of undead under your command to the damage.
Additionally, the undead have difficulty harming you. If an undead targets you directly with an attack or a harmful spell, that creature must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC (an undead needn’t make the save when it includes you in an area effect, such as the explosion of fireball). On a failed save, the creature must choose a new target or forfeit targeting someone instead of you, potentially wasting the attack or spell. On a successful save, the creature is immune to this effect for 24 hours. An undead is also immune to this effect for 24 hours if you target it with an attack or a harmful spell.
Defy Death
Starting at 6th level, you can choose to give yourself vitality when you cheat death or when you help someone else cheat it.
When you stabilize an ally with Spare the Dying you can choose to either allow them to regain hit points equal to 1d8 + your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1) or gain them yourself. You also can choose to regain these hit points when you succeed on a death-saving throw.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to Charisma modifier (a minimum of once), you regain all uses of this ability on a long rest.
Convergence of Death
Beginning at 10th level, the boundaries between you and the undead have begun to blur: you gain resistance to necrotic and poison damage, have advantage on saving throws made against poison, and you do not need to eat, drink, or breath. Additionally, you no longer require sleep, you spend your long rest in an inactive, motionless state, during which you retain consciousness.
As an action, for 1 hour you can grant a number of allied creatures equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1) several of your features:
Resistance to Necrotic and Poison Damage
The second half of your Among the Dead, pertaining to stopping undead creatures' attacks.
Not needing to breathe
You regain use of this feature after completing a long rest.
Undying Incarnation
When you reach 14th level, The hordes of the undead under your command now at times sever even past their own expiration points. Any undead that is friendly to you or that is under your control you can choose to do one of the following:
As a bonus action, you can choose to trade places with an undead under your command that is within 60 feet of you, that you can see.
As a reaction to one of the undead under your control being reduced to 0hp, you can command it to make one final attack, or instead, you can release the negative energy from it, causing it to explode; all creatures within 5ft must make a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC, or take 3d8 necrotic damage. You gain Half the damage dealt as temporary hit points
You can have a number of undead equal to your Charisma modifier (a minimum of 1) server you for a longer duration when you cast a spell that creates undead the time of which the spell is active, is longer. 1 minute becoming 1 hour, 1 hour becoming 8 hours, however, doesn’t work on spells that give you control for 24 hours, and spells that would create undead from a creature killed by the spell, like finger of death are controlled by you for 1 minute regardless.
You can make use of this ability a number of times equal to half your Proficiency bonus rounded down, you regain all usages on a long rest.
I like this rework very much, it keeps that whole Supportlock aspect going while making it contrast well against the Undeadlock who turns into an undead as opposed to this one commanding them.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone it is really appreciated I know that some of these sub-classes don't get a lot of attention with players especially with how bad these have ended up. here's a bit more of the revisions that everyone has given in more of a final form.
Starting at 1st level, you learn the spare the dying, and chill touch cantrip, which counts as a warlock cantrips for you but don’t count against the number of cantrips you know, you can cast either of these cantrips as a bonus action on you’re turn. When you cast a necromancy spell of 1st level or higher that deals necrotic damage you can add your Charisma modifier + the number of undead under your command to the damage.
Additionally, the undead have difficulty harming you. If an undead targets you directly with an attack or a harmful spell, that creature must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC (an undead needn’t make the save when it includes you in an area effect, such as the explosion of fireball). On a failed save, the creature must choose a new target or forfeit targeting someone instead of you, potentially wasting the attack or spell. On a successful save, the creature is immune to this effect for 24 hours. An undead is also immune to this effect for 24 hours if you target it with an attack or a harmful spell.
The section I've underlined is extremely overpowered. We're potentially talking an absolute ton of damage with Animate dead and other spells the warlock already has access to can pile on. Creating hordes of undead is already extremely powerful. This would just make it crazy. Instead of giving them the spell to their spell list, perhaps have something like, "You can cast the spell Animate Dead once per long rest without using a spell slot." This limits the number in a more balanced way. Instead of Animate Dead, consider giving your warlock Summon Undead. Warlocks already have access to it but adding it to the spell list automatically is thematic and useful without making this ability extremely overpowered.
While you may only get 2 short rests in an adventuring day, who is to say you can't spend 24 hours at a graveyard on downtime day between adventures? It's pretty common to have a "what was your character up since last time" type of start to a session. People like crafting and doing other things. If you just spent all your time casting animate dead, it would get out of control pretty fast.
Defy Death
Starting at 6th level, you can choose to give yourself vitality when you cheat death or when you help someone else cheat it.
When you stabilize an ally with Spare the Dying you can choose to either allow them to regain hit points equal to 1d8 + your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1) or gain them yourself. You also can choose to regain these hit points when you succeed on a death-saving throw.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to Charisma modifier (a minimum of once), you regain all uses of this ability on a long rest.
This underlined area is also probably too strong. Maybe once or twice per long rest, at most.
Convergence of Death
Beginning at 10th level, the boundaries between you and the undead have begun to blur: you gain resistance to necrotic and poison damage, have advantage on saving throws made against poison, and you do not need to eat, drink, or breath. Additionally, you no longer require sleep, you spend your long rest in an inactive, motionless state, during which you retain consciousness.
As an action, for 1 hour you can grant a number of allied creatures equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1) several of your features:
Resistance to Necrotic and Poison Damage
The second half of your Among the Dead, pertaining to stopping undead creatures' attacks.
Not needing to breathe
You regain use of this feature after completing a long rest.
This would trivialize all undead encounters.
Undying Incarnation
When you reach 14th level, The hordes of the undead under your command now at times sever even past their own expiration points. Any undead that is friendly to you or that is under your control you can choose to do one of the following:
As a bonus action, you can choose to trade places with an undead under your command that is within 60 feet of you, that you can see.
As a reaction to one of the undead under your control being reduced to 0hp, you can command it to make one final attack, or instead, you can release the negative energy from it, causing it to explode; all creatures within 5ft must make a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC, or take 3d8 necrotic damage. You gain Half the damage dealt as temporary hit points
These are really cool and I'd even say that you can do these more often. Maybe each one equal to proficiency bonus. It's the capstone ability!
You can have a number of undead equal to your Charisma modifier (a minimum of 1) server you for a longer duration when you cast a spell that creates undead the time of which the spell is active, is longer. 1 minute becoming 1 hour, 1 hour becoming 8 hours, however, doesn’t work on spells that give you control for 24 hours, and spells that would create undead from a creature killed by the spell, like finger of death are controlled by you for 1 minute regardless.
You can make use of this ability a number of times equal to half your Proficiency bonus rounded down, you regain all usages on a long rest.
This just compounds the problems of your level 1 ability and makes it even more outrageously overpowered. It also makes the record keeping of your undead much more complicated.
What you've created here is not only the strongest warlock but also the strongest necromancer. I really like the direction though.
One thing I think would be really cool would be to have an always on undead pet, similar to the new beastmaster or drakewarden, and incorporate that into the mechanics you already have. It would require further retuning though. My experience with having tons of minions is that it slows gameplay down a ton and decreases everyone else's fun. It basically requires you to have some kind of spreadsheet to handle the dice rolls. It also makes encounters a lot, lot easier for your party which means DMs have to up the difficulty or find ways to just destroy all your minions which is unfun for the necromancer player. Having 2 or 3 powerful undead instead of a horde of crappy undead is better mechanics wise, in my opinion.
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Undying (revised)
Expanded spell list:
1st level Inflict wounds, false life
2nd level blindness/deafness, gentle repose
3rd level revivify, animate dead
4th level death ward, Aura of life
5th level Contagion, Hallow
Among the Dead
Starting at 1st level, you learn the spare the dying, and chill touch cantrip, which counts as a warlock cantrips for you, you can cast either of these cantrips as a bonus action on you’re turn. When you cast a necromancy spell of 1st level or higher that deals necrotic damage you can add your Charisma modifier + the number of undead under your command to the damage.
Additionally, undead have difficulty harming you. If an undead targets you directly with an attack or a harmful spell, that creature must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC (an undead needn’t make the save when it includes you in an area effect, such as the explosion of fireball). On a failed save, the creature must choose a new target or forfeit targeting someone instead of you, potentially wasting the attack or spell. On a successful save, the creature is immune to this effect for 24 hours. An undead is also immune to this effect for 24 hours if you target it with an attack or a harmful spell.
Defy Death
Starting at 6th level, you can give yourself vitality when you cheat death or when you help someone else cheat it. You can regain hit points equal to 1d8 + your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1 hit point) when you succeed on a death-saving throw or when you stabilize a creature with spare the dying.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to Charisma modifier (a minimum of once), you regain all uses of this ability on a long rest.
Convergence of Death
Beginning at 10th level, your similarities to the undead have begun to blur, you gain resistance to necrotic and poison damage, and as an action, for 1 hour you can give a number of allies equal to your Charisma modifier, besides yourself;
You also gain these features however they are permanent for you. You also don’t require sleep, you only need to rest for the allotted time of a long rest for your race, to complete a long rest.
Undying Incarnation
When you reach 14th level, The hordes of the undead under your command now at times sever even past their own expiration points. Any undead that is friendly to you or that is under your control you can choose to do one of the following:
Let's be Honest here, the undying is one of the most underwhelming warlocks Wizards has released, and the undead only makes it worse for this sub-class. So as to not have it step on to many toes, this has become my solution to the undying warlock as it has changed up some of its play and made it make the necromancer, and the grave cleric rethink making fun of it for a bit more than half a second. to those who post I would like to know what you think needs a change after looking at this revision to the undying and what it might need to be better than it once was. and the goal here is not to make an undead warlock but one all its own, with a new version of the undying.
While it is very thematically appropriate to have animate dead on the list, with the 2 casts per short rests it could get out of hand quick. Probably no worse than when a necromancer works the system, later in the game but when you first get it, it could be overly potent.
I think someones done the math on how many undead this would mean, its a lot of them. I suspect that is why they never got it, hell animate dead is appropriate for the base warlock. But since a 10th level wizard could control 46 undead, it would take 2 short rests to duplicate that. I don't see a problem with it in the sense that all the problems with it also have to be handed for the any full caster with the spell who works it. With enough short rests it would be around a 100, and no one wants to deal with that. Heck no one wants to deal with 48 of them.
Among the Dead: Like this one, but I would make one small change to the language: "...which count as warlock cantrips for you but do not count against the number of cantrips you know,..." to ensure that RAW they arent being forced to give up cantrips when they get these.
Defy Death: I think it would make more sense to give the other creature the temporary hit points when you target them with spare the dying, rather than yourself.
Convergence of Death: This one is fine, but I think the language could use a little brushing up as some of it reads kind of awkwardly right now.
Undying Incarnation: I agree with the posts above that Animate Dead is too powerful on the warlock, and thus this feature loses alot of its potency. Perhaps rewriting it with Summon Undead in mind where you could get stronger benefits, but with the potential of only one creature under your command.
Edit: Almost forgot that there is a Warlock Invocation which allows you to cast Animate Dead (Undying Servitude). It would be a little unorthodox, but perhaps you could give them access to this Invocation as a subclass feature rather than as a spell.
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While technically true I don't think in any game you can just back end short rests or separate them by 10 minutes. You'd be lucky if a DM lets you take 4 short rests a day and that is whether or not they had to worry about this trick. A 11th level wizard would be at 66 controlled with 1 short rest. And on top of that while its slow going both of them will have access to unlimited zombies in 2 more levels. This is one of those problems that only exist on paper, at least in any way more so than it already does for the wizard. Maybe they'd squeeze enough short rests out of the day for 96 but is that really that much worse than 66?
Personally though I'd get rid of it as even with 0 short rests that is likely more minions running around than what any group wants to deal with. They really went out of their way to make the action economy a train wreck this edition with all the base summon spells. The new ones like summon undead/fey etc are not too bad in that regard but I feel they may be a bit too powerful. I'd switch it to summon undead except for the issue where warlocks just already get it for free. Life transference would be a interesting choice opening up a from of healing for this warlock. Maybe in Defy death allow you to regain HP when spare the dying is cast to stabilize someone or when life transference is cast at someone with 0 HP. The thing is once you remove animate dead most the other subclass features fall apart here. So its really a start over from scratch type thing if you don't have that.
That said, the Golgari Swarm background in Ravnica does give the Warlock access to the Animate Dead spell anyway.
They really like throwing bigger spell lists at people recently, this, mark of x from eberon, tashas expanding the list(the last one i mostly agree with it feels like filling out things that should have been there). I don't own ravnica no real desire to, thats a power creep background, it effectively has 2 features instead of 1 on top of the normal skills, tool, language and the spell list is incredibly good when you are playing a spellcaster who normally does not have access to some of these.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone it is really appreciated I know that some of these sub-classes don't get a lot of attention with players especially with how bad these have ended up. here's a bit more of the revisions that everyone has given in more of a final form.
Undying Warlock (Revised)
Expanded spell list:
1st level Inflict wounds, false life
2nd level blindness/deafness, gentle repose
3rd level Summon undead, life transference
4th level death ward, Aura of life
5th level Contagion, Hallow
Among the Dead
Starting at 1st level, you learn the spare the dying, and chill touch cantrip, which counts as a warlock cantrips for you but don’t count against the number of cantrips you know, you can cast either of these cantrips as a bonus action on you’re turn. When you cast a necromancy spell of 1st level or higher that deals necrotic damage you can add your Charisma modifier + the number of undead under your command to the damage.
Additionally, the undead have difficulty harming you. If an undead targets you directly with an attack or a harmful spell, that creature must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC (an undead needn’t make the save when it includes you in an area effect, such as the explosion of fireball). On a failed save, the creature must choose a new target or forfeit targeting someone instead of you, potentially wasting the attack or spell. On a successful save, the creature is immune to this effect for 24 hours. An undead is also immune to this effect for 24 hours if you target it with an attack or a harmful spell.
Defy Death
Starting at 6th level, you can choose to give yourself vitality when you cheat death or when you help someone else cheat it.
When you stabilize an ally with Spare the Dying you can choose to either allow them to regain hit points equal to 1d8 + your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1) or gain them yourself. You also can choose to regain these hit points when you succeed on a death-saving throw.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to Charisma modifier (a minimum of once), you regain all uses of this ability on a long rest.
Convergence of Death
Beginning at 10th level, the boundaries between you and the undead have begun to blur: you gain resistance to necrotic and poison damage, have advantage on saving throws made against poison, and you do not need to eat, drink, or breath. Additionally, you no longer require sleep, you spend your long rest in an inactive, motionless state, during which you retain consciousness.
As an action, for 1 hour you can grant a number of allied creatures equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1) several of your features:
You regain use of this feature after completing a long rest.
Undying Incarnation
When you reach 14th level, The hordes of the undead under your command now at times sever even past their own expiration points. Any undead that is friendly to you or that is under your control you can choose to do one of the following:
You can make use of this ability a number of times equal to half your Proficiency bonus rounded down, you regain all usages on a long rest.
I like this rework very much, it keeps that whole Supportlock aspect going while making it contrast well against the Undeadlock who turns into an undead as opposed to this one commanding them.
The section I've underlined is extremely overpowered. We're potentially talking an absolute ton of damage with Animate dead and other spells the warlock already has access to can pile on. Creating hordes of undead is already extremely powerful. This would just make it crazy. Instead of giving them the spell to their spell list, perhaps have something like, "You can cast the spell Animate Dead once per long rest without using a spell slot." This limits the number in a more balanced way. Instead of Animate Dead, consider giving your warlock Summon Undead. Warlocks already have access to it but adding it to the spell list automatically is thematic and useful without making this ability extremely overpowered.
While you may only get 2 short rests in an adventuring day, who is to say you can't spend 24 hours at a graveyard on downtime day between adventures? It's pretty common to have a "what was your character up since last time" type of start to a session. People like crafting and doing other things. If you just spent all your time casting animate dead, it would get out of control pretty fast.
This underlined area is also probably too strong. Maybe once or twice per long rest, at most.
This would trivialize all undead encounters.
These are really cool and I'd even say that you can do these more often. Maybe each one equal to proficiency bonus. It's the capstone ability!
This just compounds the problems of your level 1 ability and makes it even more outrageously overpowered. It also makes the record keeping of your undead much more complicated.
What you've created here is not only the strongest warlock but also the strongest necromancer. I really like the direction though.
One thing I think would be really cool would be to have an always on undead pet, similar to the new beastmaster or drakewarden, and incorporate that into the mechanics you already have. It would require further retuning though. My experience with having tons of minions is that it slows gameplay down a ton and decreases everyone else's fun. It basically requires you to have some kind of spreadsheet to handle the dice rolls. It also makes encounters a lot, lot easier for your party which means DMs have to up the difficulty or find ways to just destroy all your minions which is unfun for the necromancer player. Having 2 or 3 powerful undead instead of a horde of crappy undead is better mechanics wise, in my opinion.